Immigrant sex offenders face deportation hearings

Brendan Scott:

They each crossed this country's borders, settled in Orange County and committed sex crimes – most against victims 13 to 16 years old.

Despite being convicted on charges ranging from sexual misconduct to rape, eight foreign nationals walked free in Middletown and Newburgh without fear of being deported.

That is until yesterday, when a joint operation by federal and local law enforcement rounded up the eight men and jailed them, pending deportation hearings.

Authorities say the sweep – part of a nationwide initiative called Operation Predator – has rounded up the last of the county's immigrants who committed sex crimes.

"We want to send a clear message to anyone who comes to this country and commits a crime," said James Mooney, who heads the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Hudson Valley office. "We want to send a message that they are not welcome in this country."

Among those arrested yesterday were a Venezuelan national who sodomized a 13-year-old girl and an illegal immigrant from Jamaica who raped a 14-year-old girl, immigration officials said in a news release.

The others arrested were natives of Ecuador, El Salvador, Guyana, Honduras and Mexico.

Yesterday's roundup follows four earlier arrests, bringing to 12 the total of so-called "criminal immigrants" detained in recent weeks. Of those, eight were in the country illegally. Four were legal residents but could still face deportation because of the nature of their crimes.

The Orange County Sheriff's Office and the county Probation Department also took part in the sweep. Federal and local officials would not release the names or addresses of the immigrants jailed, citing a desire to protect the identity of victims.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Operation Predator has netted more than 5,000 such offenders in the program's two-year existence. Geared toward arresting those who have committed sex crimes, the sweeps signal tighter enforcement of immigration laws post-9/11.

Those attacks led to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and, subsequently, a new local Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Fishkill, where the agents who made yesterday's arrests were based.

In the past, most deportation efforts were focused on criminals whose convictions resulted in sentences in excess of one year, Mooney said. All of the men arrested yesterday had been released after less than one year of incarceration.

A Second Independence Day: Summary Deportation Now (Or Counter-Insurgency Later?)

Feds, Orange County agencies arrest 12 illegal aliens